Successful economic development is usually characterized by two salient phenomena: industrialization and demographic transition. Chronologically both events happen so closely to each other that historians and economists alike suspect that they are interrelated. This paper develops a theory for...

During the World Cup 2006 Germany experienced a surge of revealed patriotism unseen so far after World War II. How can this unexpected and spontaneous change of social behavior be explained given that preference (for patriotism) are stable over time? This essay introduces and discusses three...

This paper provides a unified growth theory, i.e. a model that explains the very long-run economic and demographic development path of industrialized economies, stretching from the pre-industrial era to present-day and beyond. Making strict use of Malthus' (1798) so-called preventive check...

A neoclassical growth model is augmented by a corporate sector, financial intermediation, and a set of tax rates. In this setting, capital structure is determined by the interplay between an advantage of debt finance resulting from the tax system and a disadvantage resulting from asymmetric...

Macroeconomic studies of tax policy in dynamic general equilibrium usually assume that reforms hit the economy unexpectedly and last forever. Here, we explore how previous results change when we allow policy changes to be pre-announced and of finite duration and when these facts are anticipated...

This article shows within a simple growth model how the make up of society affects economic performance when property rights are unenforceable. It investigates behavior of non-cooperative social groups that consume, produce, and appropriate resources either peacefully or through contest. For the...

The natural sciences have established a general scaling law that relates metabolism and body size of animals. Recently this association - known as Kleiber's law - has received deep theoretical foundation by network theory and has been fruitfully applied to explain various biological phenomena,...

We develop a simple model of labor market participation, human capital degradation, and re-training. We focus on how non-participation, as a distinct state from unemployment and employment, is determined by the welfare system in interaction with labor market conditions and personal...

This paper introduces wealth-dependent time preference into a simple model of endogenous growth. The model generates adjustment dynamics in line with the historical facts on savings and economic growth in Europe from the High Middle Ages to today. Along a virtuous cycle of development more...

This study constructs a simple, two-sector Malthusian model with agriculture and industry, and use it to identify the determinants of subsistence income. We make standard assumptions about preferences and production technology, but by contrast to existing studies we assume that children and...